How To Configure Custom User Roles

  • 26 February 2018
  • 8 replies
  • 1159 views
Frank
Rank
Userlevel 1

There are two types of ‘role’ on our platform - ‘Primary roles’ and ‘Custom user roles’. Primary roles are baked into Control (admin, moderator, etc) and can’t be changed. On the flip side, you’ve got the power to determine your own set of custom user roles and define their permissions and behaviour.

Here’s a list of some gnarly stuff can you do with Custom User Roles:

 

How To Add a Custom User Role

  1. Go to Control → Settings → User Roles → Add Role
  2. Give your role a Title, optionally select whether users with this role should have only 60 minutes or unlimited time to edit their posts, and optionally choose which sections of Control users with this role should have access to.
  3. Press ‘Save changes’, and you’re done.

 

How To Enable A Custom User Role For A Particular Member

  1. Go to Control → Users → User overview (find a member through the search/filters).
  2. Under the Usergroups → Custom Roles section, enable one or more custom roles on the member’s profile.
  3. Press ‘Apply changes’ (it’s tucked away at the bottom of the Usergroups section) and you’re done.

You can edit any aspect of a custom user role, at any time. Just click ‘Edit’ for the custom user role you’d like to change (you can also find a ‘Delete’ button within the edit screen).

😌

8 replies

Anja
@Frank Hi there, just found this topic and I have question regarding the user roles. I've played with the roles a bit and noticed that the restrictions for a customer role do not overwrite the rights for a primary role, is that correct?



So if a "Moderator" has the right to change user roles and I add a custom roles without the right to do that, the Moderator would still be able to change roles of others, right?
Frank
Rank
Userlevel 1
You are correct @Anja: custom roles do not overwrite primary roles.



Currently, if you want a moderator to have fewer rights than the primary "Moderator" role, you need to create a custom user role, set the moderator's primary role to "Registered User", and then give the moderator the custom user role you created.



Note: using the above workaround does currently cause some problems, including but not limited to:


  • Moderators with the "Registered User" primary role can't be assigned to topics in Control.
  • Analytics become skewed because the moderators' contributions are counted as coming from a "Registered User".
  • Moderators with the "Registered User" primary role are included on the 'Most liked' user widget.
😌
Tiou
Note: using the above workaround does currently cause some problems, for instance:

  • Moderators with the "Registered User" primary role can't be assigned to topics in Control.


Hi @Frank,



Is there any workaround for this ?
forum.voo.be
Frank
Rank
Userlevel 1
Unfortunately there's no workaround for that problem at the moment @Tiou.
😌
Moller Toma
Rank
@Frank , @Julian



I have internal members who can only ask questions in the internal category and see questions in the external category. My primary group is registered users, and the students or Trainees have a custom role. But the custom role is useless if the primary role allows you to post topics eitherway. This means that I need to assign fewer rights to the primary role and create a customer role for all my customers and assign them all manually to the custom role 'employee' to solve this problem? This cannot be a solution, it' s too time-consuming.
Julian
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +3
Hi Moller,



thanks for sharing your concern with us!



You are right, as stated in https://The primary role is leading. If the primary role allows you to do something, a custom role will not be able to take this right away from you. :



The primary role is leading. If the primary role allows you to do something, a custom role will not be able to take this right away from you.



I understand your view on this, however it goes both ways: If we would set up the system that a "Deny" to e.g. view a category would trump the "Grant" of a primary role, you would also run into issues. Then you would also have to add viewing, writing and commenting rights for every custom role in every category that you have on your community.



Usually what you are speaking of is not an issue: If you make sure to communicate (in a very clear way) to your students / trainees that they are not allowed to post in a certain category, they will also not do that. In general, people that have access to a hidden area are usually users who have your trust (until a certain degree).



As far as I know there are other communities doing it like this as well and so far I have not heard that this forms a big problem for others.



Only way to solve this in a good way would be to introduce another primary role (e.g. "employees" or something else) which you then could assign to these users. This would however still mean that you have to assign this on an individual level to these students...



Cheers,



Julian
I follow my nose, it always knows
DannyPancratz
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +5

Is there documentation somewhere for all of the toggles in the “User has access to” section when creating/editing the user roles?

These read to me like they’re all Control or backend related, but some might be platform features to enable/disable. 

What’s the best place to find that information? 

Julian
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +3

Is there documentation somewhere for all of the toggles in the “User has access to” section when creating/editing the user roles?

Yes, there is! You can find it here:

It is true that they are mostly backend related. There are two items however that stand out in this list:

  • Upload files to posts: Should you have disabled file attachment permissions (found under Settings - Attachment Permissions) for most users, then you can use this custom role to give individual users a right to attach files in the frontend.
  • Appearance: This allows a user to access the Customization & Theme mode in the frontend.

Other than that, custom user roles are used to give category access & permission to create content within the frontend. The custom user role in these cases have no settings activated in the page you are refering to, they are simply being created and assigned to accounts to identify certain users / groups. The actual setting to manage their permissions for a category are then located in the category permission settings pages, where you can toggle on/off rights for specific custom user roles.

I hope this will help, let me know if you are having additional questions around this subject!

I follow my nose, it always knows

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